Ghost Riders
by tyrsibs
Summary: The road dropped me in his path, and in spite of my better judgement, I got into his beautiful car. Guess it was my night to save Dean Winchester. (Note: This is an SPN crossover with Seanan McGuire's Ghost Roads series, about a hitchhiking ghost who acts as guardian or psychopomp to those who pick her up. But knowing the book is not a requirement, I hope, to enjoying this!)
1. Chapter 1

I heard her coming, tearing up the daylight highway somewhere behind me as I walked, and I stuck my thumb out, more from compulsion than need. I looked around, getting my bearings on the road that I'd landed on-I was in a desert of red earth and hillsides smudged with sagebrush and rustling clumps of grass. The sun was a pink sliver to the west, the direction I was facing, and night had already closed the sky behind me. Just to the north of the setting sun, a bank of clouds rushed towards the road I walked. I caught the lightning flashes in the sky out of the corner of my eye, and sighed. Trust me to land in the path of a storm.

It was an odd place to be, though. I don't usually walk out of the twilight and into the red deserts of the Southwest. More often, I find myself in cornfield country or even up along the coast in Maine. Old places, with old roads that welcome hitchhikers, even the dead ones. In those parts, if people know about me, they call me The Phantom Prom Date or The Girl in the Diner. The ones who meet me, though, usually call me by my name. And not all of them realize that they're talking to a dead girl. I am Rose Marshal, and I died on Sparrow Hill Road in Buckley Township, Michigan, run off the road at the age of sweet sixteen. By the world's calendar, I've been dead now more than three times as long as I'd been alive.

The car behind me had a deep, throaty growl as she sped closer, bringing with her the scent of ashes and something else, something sweet and pungent. Not lilies, I decided, and not the wormwood I associated with malevolent intent. Something more complicated. I kept my thumb out, but didn't turn around or break my stride to look over my shoulder. No scent of lilies meant the driver wasn't one of mine. I didn't know why I'd wound up on his road, and I wasn't sure I wanted this ride.

The car roared past me, and I dropped my hand, shrugging my shoulder at her as she swept by. She was long, sleek, and jeweled in chrome, a black beauty of a car, and I grinned both in relief and appreciation at the sight of her clean red taillights. Until her right blinker flipped on and those lights flared their intention to stop. The driver gave me a polite amount of space as he pulled onto the shoulder and stopped just ahead of me. The turn signal snapped off.

"Well, shit."

I could always slip into the twilight, disappear from this cold desert highway, leave the driver wondering what he'd thought he'd seen in his headlights. But the ghost roads had brought me into his path. I was wanted, here. And I had to admit, I ached with the cold, part of the never-ending good times that come with being dead. I walked up to the passenger door and leaned in to get a look at the driver. "Where are you headed?" I asked.

"Hey, isn't that supposed to be my line?" The driver twisted in his seat and ducked his head down so he could see my face, hunching his shoulders over and leading with his chin. If I'd actually been as young as I look, I might have drawn in my breath when he looked straight at me. He wasn't just handsome, he looked like a matinee movie star, complete with full lips, hooded eyes and sharp cheekbones, the kind of face that shadows adore. On cue as I stared, a lightning flash briefly illuminated the front seat and I caught a challenging look in his light-colored eyes before the cab fell back into the half-light of amber dashboard bulbs. He pursed his lips. "West," he finally said. "California, eventually."

He grinned at me, a cocksure grin that somehow mad his face more boyish. The scent that I caught through the open passenger window had ashes in it, sure, and gunpowder and woodsmoke. All of which pointed to danger, though whether it was his or mine, I couldn't tell. The undercurrent of something sweet was even stronger, now, and I pulled back a little when I recognized it. Jasmine. The night-bloomer. This boy had found the twilight, more than once. And it had embraced him.

His grin faded as I continued to hesitate. He pulled himself back, and his posture seemed to close up as he put his hands back onto the wheel, a protective gesture. He looked back over at me, and spoke again, a little softer now. "Look, I don't usually stop for hitchers. But it's late, there's some clouds rolling in, and you looked like you could use a hand-so-"

He let that hang in the air between us, inviting me to lean back in and continue the conversation. I let my arm rest on the top of his car and opened my mouth.

What I intended to say, though, was washed away by a flood of emotions that overwhelmed me as I placed my hand the car. There was something in her that nagged and pulled at me when I touched her roof, something that left a restless itch at the base of my spine. But that ominous feeling was pushed aside by the message that the car herself sent into the palm of my hand. She hit me with a fierce devotion for her driver, cut by a pulsing worry. She was frightened for him, and practically begging me to get in and help him out.

Now, I might have been able to resist his charms, but how could I turn her down? I nodded, and stepped back to open the door. He beat me to it, flipping the door lever on his side and giving a hefty push, and the door swung wide with a homely creak, inviting me in. I slid onto the bench seat, pulling the door closed behind me as gently as I could. I put my palm on her dashboard and stroked it briefly, like you would pat a horse's neck to calm it down.

"She's a real beauty," I said, feeling her respond to my reassurances.

"You got that right." He smiled that boyish grin again, and ran his fingertips over the top of the steering wheel. "She's been with me pretty much my whole life. Never once let us down."

"I can tell."

He glanced at me again, and then down at my tank top and rolled-up jeans. Great, I thought. How long before he asks for some kind of payment for the ride? Maybe she's scared of him, not for him-

But he just turned, reached over the seat and drew a jacket across the across the leather back. It was a big green duffle coat, the kind that GI's used to wear in the war movies I sometimes went to with my brothers back during my all-too-short life. He handed it to me almost brusquely, waving his hand and shrugging a bit. "You look cold."

"I am." To say I was surprised by this gesture would be an understatement. All ghosts have rules, things that we figure out as we learn to navigate the layers of twilight, and road ghosts are no exception. We do get a couple of perks, though, and this is one of the best ones, as far as I was concerned. I can borrow the livings' coats, if freely given, and take on a little bit of life with them, for a while. But sitting in that car, I couldn't remember the last time I hadn't had to shiver melodramatically and ask for a coat or sweater. I took the driver's oversized coat and shrugged it on, borrowing his warmth, wrapping myself up temporarily with flesh that could feel, smell, taste the daylight world, as I pulled it over my shoulders. It was far too big for me and smelled a bit musty, like it had been thrown damp into the back seat, but it felt welcoming, too. "Thanks," I breathed. My stomach, always pining, gave an audible gurgle in harmony with the sigh.

He smirked at that, and rummaged in the map pocket on the driver's side door, coming up with a wrinkled, half-empty bag of chips which he shook open and set on the seat between us. It wasn't a cheeseburger and fries with a milkshake, but it would do. I took one and ate it whole, barely able to keep from moaning in delight at the salt and the crunch.

As I grabbed another one out of the bag, he seemed to relax suddenly, like he'd been waiting for something that didn't happen, and he could now just move past whatever it was. His smirk softened into a smile, he put her in gear and we rolled onto the highway. "You're welcome."

XXXX

He let a mile go by before he cleared his throat and removed his right hand from the steering wheel, holding it out to me without taking his eyes from the road. "I'm Dean."

I took his hand and gave it a single shake, hoping that if he registered the chill that still clung to my borrowed flesh, he'd put it down to my habit of walking around after dark without a jacket. "Rose," I said.

He nodded. "So-Rose-If you don't mind me asking-"

"What's a nice girl like me doing walking along a nowhere highway in the middle of the night?"

"I wouldn't say we're nowhere. We're just about halfway between Desertville and Los Angeles, not nowhere. But yeah. How'd you wind up alone out here?"

I sighed, hoping it didn't sound too melodramatic. "My boyfriend and I had a fight. He kicked me out of the car and took off," I lied.

"That bastard," he said, eyebrows raised. I couldn't tell for sure if he had swallowed my line or not. If he didn't believe me, he was good at covering.

"What about you? You were the first person to come by in forever."

"Going to California."

"You told me that. What's in California?"

"I'm gonna try to meet up with my Dad. We, uh, work together."

"Try?"

"Yeah, well-he's been a little out of touch lately. I need to catch up with him, maybe give him a hand with the job he's working."

"What do you guys do?"

"Landscaping. A little pest control on the side." He tapped his fingers on the wheel, then shrugged as if he'd made up his mind about something. "And I got a little brother out there, going to school. Who knows? Maybe after the job, I'll go on up and see him, too."

"Where does he go?"

"Stanford." Another shrug, like it was no big deal. "His name is Sam."

At my interest in little brother, something seemed to thaw in Dean. He was quiet for a moment, looking out at the highway, and then he started telling me about the last time he and Sam had been on this road together, on their way to meet their Dad at another one of his jobs. They'd blown a tire, and he'd started trying to work the jack with three broken fingers - "I'd gotten into a fight the week before," he said, waving my curiosity away with a waggle of his right hand. Suddenly, there was thirteen-year old Sam, taking the tire iron out of Dean's hand, ordering him to sit. "Of course, he'd never changed a tire before, so I still had to supervise." That soft grin appeared again as he remembered.

"I was the one being supervised in my house," I said. "Little sister. Two big brothers." I grinned at him. "When I let them, that is."

His look invited me to say more, so I obliged. The conversation swirled around, mixing our memories together, with half-truths and stories that took on the sheen of legends-family lore, at least. We passed a happy half hour with this cloud of nostalgia building in the front seat of Dean's black beauty.

Of course, clouds often bring cold rain, though I began the drenching innocently enough. At some point Dean had started referring to his brother as "Sammy," and I mimicked him unconsciously when I asked him, "so when you get to Palo Alto, will Sammy have room to put you up?"

His smile faded. "I don't know, I haven't talked to him in a while."

Dean leaned over and snapped on the radio, dissipating the memories as he turned the knob to find a station. There wasn't much out there and he rolled through a couple of preachers, a salsa marathon, and some ancient Grand Old Opry recording before stopping at a staticky station playing a song with a rockabilly beat. It wasn't something I recognized, but it sounded like the music that my boyfriend—my real boyfriend-used to play when we would go on drives through the hills around Buckley Township. Before I died, that is, run off the road on my way to meet him on our prom night.

Dean and I fell silent, listening to the scratchy music. A few raindrops splattered across the windshield, carried across the desert by the wind. Outside the car windows I watched the storm clouds sweep the stars up into their roiling black mass. We shivered together when the purple-white lightning began to flash.

XXXXX

"Where do you want to go, Rose?"

I started at his quiet question. "The next town is fine."

He snorted. "How old are you? Fifteen, sixteen? I'm not gonna just drop you off on some street corner."

"I'm old enough."

"Yeah, that's what I thought at your age."

"OK, old man-" He might have been over twenty-five, but not by too many days, I thought. "Make it a diner or a truck stop, then. I have family I can call."

"Who?"

An hour of driving and a few potato chips, and he's got a big brother complex already. I glared into the dark, smelling nothing but the ozone in the air. "My aunt has a diner up the road a bit north of here. The Last Dance."

"Never heard of that one. And I know a lot of diners."

"I bet." I still wasn't sure why the road and his black beauty wanted me in his passenger seat. That storm was something tangible, sure, but it didn't bring me the scent of ashes and lilies that usually signaled an oncoming accident in my world. He glanced over at me, a quick grin inviting me to continue.

"It's a nice place, but kinda out of the way." In truth, it was the closest place I had to a home in the twilight, the perfect 1950's diner where there was always an open red vinyl stool and music on the jukebox, while neon lights lit a green beacon in the dim. "You sorta have to be on its road to find it. Anyway, she'll come down and help me out if I call." I was playing the hapless teen bit a little hard, I admit, but there was some truth to that line as well.

"Ok. I guess." He pursed those full lips again. "Or I could drive you. I can take a little detour. You said north of here? What town?"

I sighed inwardly. This was the problem with making up stories, I thought. I looked out the window and up at the storm that was now almost on top of us. As I gazed up into the black sky, I finally caught another scent, a mix of leather, burned coffee, and acrid sweat that began to overpower the clean impression of un-dropped rain. Something was hiding up in those clouds. I leaned further over, ducking my head and pressing my cheek against the window to get a closer look. Dean's car pulsed back at me through the touch. She'd gone from concerned to frightened.

With the next flash, I saw them, silhouetted in red against the rolling thunderheads, a mass of backs, hooves, and horns. Dean shot me a look as I gasped in surprise.

"What?" he leaned over the wheel to look up at the sky.

I craned my neck, sure I'd been seeing things, imagining shapes in clouds, but no such luck. Another flash lit them up again, as they broke free of the storm and began stampeding towards the road. A herd of cattle, sparks dancing off their hooves, was heading right for us. I heard Dean mutter under his breath.

"What the hell-?"

"Dean?"

"Yeah." He cleared his throat.

"Can your car outrun a stampede?"

At that he gave me an appraising look, as if wondering why I wasn't more freaked out by a bunch of ghostly cattle getting ready to roll us off the road and into the ditch. I stared back until he relented and flashed me a fierce grin, the edges of his voice sharpening as he answered.

"Sweetheart, we can try." He stepped on the gas and said softly, "You heard the lady, Baby-"

Under my hand, I felt her rev up, nervous but eager to please. We leapt forward like a horse out of the racing gate, swerving just a little with the sudden burst of speed, but Dean knew what he was doing, and his baby obviously trusted him without reserve. We leveled out and pulled past the bulk of the herd just as they dove downward. Now they were only a few feet above the ground. Still, one of them managed to slap its hooves on our roof, sending a wave of ozone into her cabin that stood the hairs on my borrowed flesh up on end.

Beside me, Dean let out a "Hey!" at the beast as he corrected course again, tires squealing as the cow rumbled the rest of the way over us and off to the barrow pit on the other side of the road. I turned to look through the rearview window as the rest of the cattle flowed over the road behind us.

The last one to reach the road passed within a foot of the car's rear bumper. I saw it tilt its head at us, then it reared up its hind quarters and kicked the car's rear bumper with both hooves, bumping and scraping at the chrome. We felt the crumpling of the metal and heard a sad screeching noise even as the kick pushed Dean's baby forward and snapped our heads back over the bench seat. Dean shouted another curse as he fought the steering wheel to stay on the road.

And then the herd was behind us, running still several feet above the sagebrush. As the animals joined back into a mass of noise and backs, they seemed to return to vapor and spinning wisps of clouds that were split apart here and there by pairs of red eyes and those hooves striking sparks up into the stampede.

We looked at each other, and Dean let off the gas, letting his girl eventually roll to a stop. We smiled at each other, relief and uncertainty deflecting to nervous laughter.

"Well, that was frickin' weird," Dean said, and I laughed again at him.

It was even weirder than Dean could possibly know.

Sometimes you meet animals in the twilight. I'd seen dogs now and then, and cats, and even smaller creatures who had loved their people, or been so loved, that they stuck around and waited for little Susie or Billy to join them. Horses, too, might show up with their riders, especially on the old roads that crossed the eastern edge of the continent. And I'd heard about twilighters taking the forms of wild animals like deer or elk when they visited the daylight. But I had never seen cattle before.

"So, what were they doing here?" I muttered, craning my neck to look up at the rainless clouds that were almost directly over us now.

"Dunno-" Dean started, but he broke off and pulled his head up over the steering wheel, gazing at the storm as another blood red streak of lightning lit up the underside of the clouds. The crack of thunder that rumbled over us was deafening and made us jump and wince.

Another flash turned his upturned face ashen. "Oh. Fuck."

I leaned over the dash to see another swirling mass detaching itself from the storm. But this wasn't another stampede.

"You gotta be kidding me-" he said. "It's that goddam Johnny Cash song." He snorted in disbelief.

But he was right. My own mouth gaped open as the truth behind the storm hit me. The cattle weren't beloved animals tearing up the twilight in search of their owners. They were the quarry, a herd of beasts made to run endlessly across the sky, chased by cowboys who'd been trapped by an Old West version of the Wild Hunt.

And those damned souls were bearing straight down on us.


	2. Chapter 2

Ghost Riders Ch. 2

I didn't need to suggest that Dean hit the gas this time. I heard him say, "sonofabitch" under his breath as he threw Baby into gear and took off down the straight highway. Above us the riders continued to take shape in the sky.

I couldn't tell how many of them there were. Like the cattle they'd been chasing, they formed a chaotic mass of horse heads and cowboy hats, of hands whipping the flanks of their lathered mounts with the ends of reins or lengths of rope. At the head of the mob, standing out among them, was their trail boss. He was a big man in a long, no-color coat, his Stetson pulled low over his eyes. His horse was larger than the others, too; a black juggernaut of legs and sweaty foam, that I could almost feel it shedding as it shook its head.

On cue as this idea passed through my mind, another spray of fat raindrops hit the car windshield.

"Gross," I said. Dean grimaced in silent agreement.

The boss seemed to zero-in on us as his crew descended. He lifted his arm and issued a series of silent commands, sending a small group of riders to peel off towards the stampede that had just passed us. The rest, though, spread out and flanked him on both sides, pulling up in his wake and spinning with him as he whipped his arm down and leveled his long fingers right at us.

"It's ok," Dean muttered. "They can't outrun you, Baby."

For a minute it seemed like he was right. The Impala shot down the road, parallel to the line of riders, and it seemed like we would leave them in her dust. But then the trail boss lifted his arm again and charged ahead of his cowboys, cutting at an angle designed to intercept us. The others streamed behind him.

Beside me, Dean let out a whoop as we raced alongside the riders, pulling up next to the boss, who was now only a couple dozen yards away from the road. He caught my eye as I stared out my window at him and flashed his teeth in a grin that I knew was a match for Dean's.

My heart sank as the boss pointed at us again, palm out, laying a silent command out across the road. I laid my own palm on the Impala's dashboard as if to steady her, but there wasn't much I could really do for her. The boss's power was strong, and as he got even closer, I felt her engine begin to stutter.

Dean's elation turned into a soft chant of "no, no, no, no, c'mon, Baby-"

She sputtered, trying her best to push forward, but the amber dashboard lights began to flicker. In seconds, they winked out completely, and then her engine cut out, too. She rolled to a stop just as the trail boss reached the road and pulled his black horse up, right in front of us, only yards away from Baby's grill. I could see that the ghostly steed's hooves weren't touching the asphalt. The other riders streamed around the car, some of their hooves bouncing off the roof, and they touched down on either side of the road. They yelled and lashed at their mounts, spinning around us and the trail boss in a chaotic storm.

In the center of the crowd the trail boss sat his horse and transferred his stare from me to Dean, who gazed silently back at the horseman who'd blocked our way and maybe killed his Baby. His jaw muscles flexed as he swallowed.

" _Showtime_ ," I thought, and grabbed the door handle. Before I could push myself out of my seat, though, Dean spoke. Well, more accurately, he barked an order at me without looking my way. "Rose, duck down and stay in the car."

He reached over the seat back to grab at something in the back, his eyes dark and cold in the gloom.

"Dean-wait-" I let go of the handle and twisted to watch him.

He came up with a shotgun, and he broke it open, cursing under his breath. I guessed it was empty.

"You really think you can shoot that guy?"

Dean shook his head once and pulled the key from the ignition, dropping it into his pocket as he turned and dove back over the seat, rummaging around until he came back up with a plastic ammo box which he flicked open. Shotgun shells stood in neat rows inside, but I didn't catch the scent of gunpowder from them. These were loaded with something else. He plucked two out of the box and loaded his shotgun, snapping it shut and then shaking the remainder of the shells out on the bench seat between us.

This was not going to go well. I wasn't sure what his plan was, but I had to try, at least one more time, to keep him sort of safe while I dealt with this cowboy. I took a breath and, as fast and with as much fear as I could muster, I burst out with, "Please don't go out there. Stay with me. We should stay in the car and-"

Dean snorted, sparing me a glance as he filled his pockets with shells. "And wait here?" he said. "In a dead car, hoping for some kinda cavalry to come save us?"

"Well-"

"Not gonna happen, sister. No thanks." He reached over to the glovebox, twisting the knob so that it fell open, and felt around inside it until his fingers closed on the handle of a wrench that looked stout and heavy as he drew it out.

Before he could pull away, I grabbed at his wrist. On the other side of the windshield, the trail boss was watching us closely. Under the brim of his hat, I saw a faint gleam of light from his eyes, a flickering smile playing across his lips.

"Look." I dropped the scared teenager act and lowered my voice, leaning towards Dean. "You can't scare these guys off, or bluff them, and that shotgun won't do a damn thing. And if you go out there, I can't-"

He didn't let me finish the thought, yanking his arm away as he sat upright. "I got this, Rose. Now stay in the car." He tucked the wrench into an inner pocket as he opened the door with his other hand, and then grabbed up the shotgun from across his lap. He swung it around and stepped out onto the pavement, for all the world as though he was stepping onto a dusty Western street for a showdown. The door slammed behind him with a decisive thunk.

"Great. All the rides I could be taking, anywhere in the country, and I have to land in front of some kind of hero." I absently stroked my palm over his Baby's dashboard as if trying to sooth her; which, I suppose, is exactly what I was trying to do. My right hand fell on the door handle again, tripping the latch and opening the door just a crack.

Outside, the cowboys and their horses began to press in on either side of the road. The boss's smile widened as Dean stepped around to the front of the car and raised the gun. He tucked its stock into the crook of his elbow with practiced grace and aimed its barrels at the boss. The black mount danced nervously in the air above the road.

The boss lowered his hand in a cutting motion. On cue, his crew swarmed towards us, blocking Dean's shot at their boss and spinning to attack. My hero shifted focus in response, taking aim and firing at the two nearest cowboys. The blast from the gun spread shell fragments in a spray that hit them both, along with three other riders. To my surprise, all five broke apart into clouds of smoke and sparks that drifted up over the hood of the car and past the windshield. I gasped as an acrid smell hit me through the now-ajar door.

Salt. Dean's shotgun was loaded with salt.

"Landscaper, my ass." I whispered to the car.

If you read up on such things, folklore with tell you that salt, a symbol of purity, can ward off spirits if spread in an unbroken line across a threshold. If you're a ghost, your knowledge of salt is more visceral than that. Salt can trap you in a place you don't want to be if some necromancer manages to catch you in a full circle. Salt holds you to a witch's will if it's incorporated into binding spells. For my part, I can eat a little bit of it, in borrowed flesh, but if I've shed my coat, I am the same as every other Twilighter.

For us, salt stings like hell. And to add insult to that injury, it looked like Dean had found a way to not only hurt a ghost, but to knock it back into the Twilight with his shotgun. Which meant, of course that he wasn't just some twenty-something kid, though I hadn't felt any power seeping around his body, so he wasn't a mage. I sighed. The jasmine scent I'd identified coming from him earlier suddenly made more sense. He was a mortal who didn't turn into a gibbering mess when confronted by ghostly riders from out of a country song. He was a kid who was ready to face down a crew of phantoms. He was a fighter, apparently.

He was a hunter.

My shoulder was against the door, but I hesitated. I was here because of him, I was sure of that now-him and his Baby. And he'd picked me up and invited me along, given me a warm jacket and food.

Salty food. He'd been testing me.

And now he thought he was protecting a teenaged damsel from the things that go bump in the night. What would he do if I revealed myself? Would he shoot me, too?

Outside, Dean crouched down against the Impala's bumper, reloading. The riders swirled around him, buffeting all three of us in their wakes, slapping at his head with their thin leather quirts as they passed, or grabbing at his shoulders and upper arms. He'd fought them off so far, but there were so many.

The shotgun fired once more and he opened up a little breathing room as the ghosts banked away in temporary caution. Through the gap I saw the trail boss dismount. Dean focused on the boss swinging down from the saddle, too, and he pulled the gun around to line up straight down the gap. I held my breath.

Before he could pull the trigger, though, the swarm descended on him again. Some of the cowboys had dismounted, too, and they ran at him from either side. One bold horseman wheeled his mount and galloped right through the Impala's engine block, swiping at the back of Dean's head as he rode by. His dappled horse blocked my view, but he must have connected, for I could see Dean stagger upright as the horse cleared the car. His shotgun turned as if under its own power and fired, taking out the two closest would-be tacklers on the passenger side of the car.

He wasn't going to make it on his own, but he'd inadvertently cleared me a path, so I took it as my cue. I pushed open the door after the cowboy on the dappled horse rolled past me out into the desert. I took a deep breath and held it as I ran through the mist of smoke and salt that the tacklers had left behind. The salt prickled and stung my face and hands, but I was still in borrowed flesh and I managed to hold myself together. Eight steps brought me to Dean's side just as he dropped the shotgun and pulled the wrench from his jacket.

He caught my movement out of the corner of his eye and turned with the wrench raised to strike. I put up my hands defensively, but he stopped himself, his eyes widening. "Goddammit, Rose!"

The boss was halfway to us now, and the cowboys on the driver's side reached out for his raised arm. He spun and brought the makeshift weapon down on the nearest one, slicing cleanly through it, turning it to a cloud that vanished into the night. Iron, I thought. The wrench was iron-of course.

As the boss got closer, the wind picked up, whirling and shrieking around us. I had to lean in and shout at his ear, even as he threw his arm in front of me in a protective gesture. Or a confining one.

"Stay close to your Baby!" I shouted at him. He was squaring himself off toward the closest cowboy, a gaunt figure with hollowed eyes and skeletal fingers, who held a leather quirt in its hand. It started to swing the short riding whip, its two thin leather tails whipping in the air. They'd have whistled if the wind hadn't been so fierce, drowning all but the loudest of sounds.

But Dean heard me. He cocked his head in my direction without turning, calling back, "What?"

"Stay put and keep clear of them! Don't let them get you off the road!"

I slipped his borrowed jacket off my shoulders and let it fall to the ground, feeling my tight green formal skirt swirling down my legs as I began to slip back into my true form. Not for the first time, I wished I'd died in a pair of dungarees. I kicked Dean's jacket under the bumper of the car to keep it out of his way as my hair started whipping about my face. It had changed, too, I knew, into a mess of lemon-bleached, windswept ringlets.

"And remember-I'm on your side!" I called, as I slipped past his guarding arm.

Behind me, I heard him stammer, "Rose-wait-what-"

The cowboy on his left must have aimed another blow, and Dean responded automatically. A swirl of salted smoke riffled through my back as I sped forward. It hurt, yeah, but I did not pause.

The way to the boss was still clear. I hitched my skirt up above my knees, took aim, and ran full speed right down the open path at him. He flashed a sour smile as I approached, but that vanished, and he grunted when I flung myself at him, head and arms first, in my own version of a football tackle. I may have screamed at him, too-a little.

I grabbed him around the waist and pushed him back, focusing all my will on dropping out of the day-lit world and into the Twilights. He was too surprised to push back, I think, but he managed to bellow at his men as we slipped between the worlds.

"Take him, boys!"

And then the road was gone, and we tumbled over each other onto a patch of gray-green grass in the Twilight.


End file.
